15 Interesting Facts You May Not Know About Stem Cell – Especially for Men

The topic of stem cells is probably the most interesting topic of the time right now. It’s in the news. It’s restoring lives. It’s taking medicine to brand new frontiers. It’s offering hope.

Below are 15 pretty incredible facts found that were buried in the research studies that many people don’t know. Be the first to know these – they are definitely conversation starters!

1. TMJ Clicking, Inability to Open the Mouth, and Jaw Pain May Be Soon Relieved by Stem Cells

Temporomandibular joint disorders are a group of muscular, skeletal and neuromuscular conditions that affect the joint involved in chewing and the muscles around it. They are one of the biggest causes of pain in the face and mouth. The disc really can’t be replaced at this time and surgery doesn’t often help.

Doctors and scientists are still not sure why they occur; they appear to be caused from multiple causes. The term TMJ disorders means that the disc that is in this joint is displaced. Once displaced, arthritic changes of the joint occur. In the past decade, alternative methods of approaching the disease symptoms and to replace the diseased tissue have been proposed. One of them is the development of stem cell-based therapies and tissue engineering.

At the University of Florida in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, scientists developed TMJ tissue-engineered disc scaffolds so the stem cells could grow at the joint site. They used a laser to drill holes through their scaffold and then seeded umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells that had already developed into chondrocytes.

The scaffolds improved cellular remodeling compared to the scaffolds that didn’t use laser. The lasered scaffolds gave the chondrocytes something to adhere to, to use for dispersion and migration. And it worked!

2. What the Tooth Fairy is Really After – It’s the Stem Cells!

When a tooth comes out of its socket, it is a rich treasure not only to the Tooth Fairy but also to you. Five different types of multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells come from the primary teeth, and they originate from the dental pulp, apical papilla, periodontal ligament and dental follicle.

It’s known that mesenchymal stromal cells from the dental tissue generate dentine-pulp-like complexes and can also become periodontal and progenitor cells for the face and skull.

3. Stem Cells Found in the Penis!

If stem cells exist in every organ, then what about the penis? Scientists at the University of California (San Francisco) found that stem cells are present in the penis in 2015 and they found out where the stem cells were located. They were primarily distributed in the subtunic and perisinusoidal spaces of the penis.

4. No More Need to Worry About Injury to the Penis, Men! 90-100% Recovery!

Long before researchers in San Francisco were excited about their finding reported in #3, Korean researchers had already been reporting that if there’s an injury to the penis, then stem cells are a solution to bring back the function.

They used bone marrow stem cells that they selectively chose (called clonal bone marrow stem cells), cultured and then injected the cells either into the penis itself or into the abdomen. Two weeks after the injection, they electrically stimulated the cavernous nerve in the animals to see if the penis worked.

The clonal bone marrow stem cells differentiated into several types of cells including adipogenic (ones that are fat cell based), osteogenic (ones that are bone cell based) and chondrogenic (ones that are cartilage based). Both types of injections significantly restored the cavernous endothelial and smooth muscle content in the mice.

However, when the stem cells were injected directly into the penis, there was 90-100% recovery of erectile function. The scientists believe this study will point the way for others to consider the treatment.

5. Any Hope If There’s Been a Crushing Injury to the Penis?

Even the thought of a crushing injury to the penis is unbearable. Chinese doctors must have been thinking about this because the thought must have fueled their study.

Human umbilical cord stem cells were used in a Chinese hospital research lab to try to reverse a crush injury of the cavernous nerve that supplies the penis in animals.

The treatment worked! It increased the number of nerve fibers that composed the dorsal penile nerve, smooth muscle and the smooth muscle/collagen ratio in the corpus cavernosum. The sores in the nerves to the penis healed. The end result was that there was an improvement in erectile function with neuroregenerative effects on cell bodies of the injured nerves.

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6. What Can We Do With the Spent Foreskins?

In Turkey, researchers were thinking outside the box when they considered that the skin taken off the penis during circumcision called the foreskin may be full of stem cells.

In their lab tests, they found that the human newborn foreskin stem cells were able to turn into all three germ layer cell types and were quite stable.

They concluded that the foreskin stem cells could potentially be used as a source of stem cells for bone damage, cartilage problem, nerve damage, formation of lesions and other diseases that are from the three germ cell origins. These cells could be easily obtainable and utilizable than other stem cell sources.

7. Some Types of Stem Cell Injections Cause Tumors

Not all stem cell injections are safe. Some will cause a type of tumor called a teratoma. This is caused by cells that have been manipulated in the laboratory and then grown in cultures. It’s possible that Mother Nature is warning the scientists – “Hey, don’t mess around with me! Screw up my codes and you won’t like what you will get!”

This doesn’t and won’t ever happen if the stem cells from foreskin are used. Another good benefit is that there is no conflict of interest with foreskin stem cells – they could be used in tissue engineering approaches without any ethical issues.

8. The Foreskin is Good For This!

In a Chinese study on foreskin stem cells, researchers found that the human foreskin stem cells suppress the growth of SGC-7901 gastric adenocarcinoma with just a single injection. It killed the cancer cells.

9. Soon You May Be Able to Eat Fat Again If You Have Pancreatitis!

Stomach cancer is not the only disorder that is helped by mesenchymal stem cells. Severe acute pancreatitis is another one.

Chinese researchers found that the stem cells can also inhibit systemic inflammation and improved the intestinal score of the animals. The stem cells markedly improved the level of dying tissue in the intestines, as well as the shedding of the villi and inflammatory cell infiltration in the gut.

10. Put the Bobbitt Case to Rest Once and For All

Sao Paulo hospital researchers wanted to see if it was possible to grow back the muscle tissue at the end of the penis with stem cells. They wanted to know if an intravenous injection was enough or if matrices had to be used inside the penis to get the growth.

Since it’s difficult to find human volunteers for this type of study – not many men are walking around with this type of problem – they used rabbits in their study.

The stem cells used were mesenchymal stem cells obtained from bone marrow. Both types of treatment of stem cells worked and completely filled out the end of the penis.

11. This Study Links the Penis to the Man’s Brain!

Korean scientists discovered in 2015 that the use of human mesenchymal stem cells could bring back erectile function in rats that had an injured penis.

Other scientists from the same country found that fetal brain stem cells (from 12-day-old rats) were able to regenerate penile smooth muscle and attenuate erectile dysfunction. They had logically deduced this because they knew that the degeneration of smooth muscle cells in the penis led to the development of erectile dysfunction. The cells showed long term survival when they were injected into the cavernous tissue.

What was that saying about how a man thinks with a certain part of his anatomy? Now there might be evidence!

12. Goodbye Diabetic Erectile Dysfunction!

Diabetics have a high rate of erectile dysfunction. How well do stem cells fare with them?

So far, only animal studies have been reported; however, the bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells when injected in the penis improved erectile dysfunction in the diabetic rats. The bad news is that over time, the effects started decreasing. The good news is that the decreasing effects can be remedied by repeated injections.

13. Get Your Type 2 Diabetes Under Control If You Have ED!

A 2016 medical study at UCLA found in their animal study that erectile dysfunction was definitely helped by stem cell injections into the penis but if there was long-term uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes, there was impaired tissue repair capacity.

Stem cells affected by diabetes could lack tissue repair efficacy if the stem cells were one’s own stem cells. The stem cells of choice would be stem cells from others who were non-diabetic. Or get over the diabetes first and let your stem cells recover.

14. Prostate Cancer Victims with ED, Pay Attention!

Erectile dysfunction is a common complication after a treatment for prostate cancer called cryotherapy.

In a Chinese rat study, rats received injury from cold that caused erectile dysfunction and then were given adipose-stem cells as treatment. The treatment seemed to bring back higher levels of three different neurotrophic factors a week after injection and made substantial recoveries of erectile function.

15. Stem Cells Straightening the Hook in Peyronie’s Disease

Erectile dysfunction is common in Peyronie’s disease, a connective tissue disorder that causes a curvature in the penis. Surgery is usually done for the condition but it’s invasive.

At Tulane University, scientists injected adipose tissue-derived stem cells in rats with both the disorders. The injection into the penis prevented and/or reduced the changes seen in Peyronie’s disease and brought therapeutic benefits to erectile dysfunction.

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